Friday, March 17, 2006

The Luck o' the Irish to you!

Here's our St. Patrick's Day lunch box all decked out in green. First, a thermos filled with green potato soup (potato soup blended with fresh parsley). Next, some St. Patty's Peanut Butter sandwiches from Dr. Fuhrman's book Disease-Proof Your Child (How does the peanut butter turn green? Hint below...). Finally, some green grapes and a little leprechaun lunch box card I found over at Alenka's Printables (an entire collection of free lunch box notes you can print out).Verdict: Here's a confession I have to make: shmoo didn't have school today (how Irish Catholic school is that, they even get St. Patty's Day off!). But I'd been looking forward to this lunch for months, so I decided to do it anyway! After taking the picture, we took it to the table and all ate together. Even Grandma came over to have lunch with us. She eyed the sandwiches warily. "Your mother is weird," she said. "Hey! These are PEAnut butter sandwiches!" he laughed. 4 leaf clovers.

58 comments:

LOL! That sounds like an odd combination, but I'm sure it was delicious, like always.

My dinner-box (don't ask) tonight holds leftover broccoli casserole, a huge bowl of chopped veggies with soy sauce and tofutti sour cream for dipping, a package of peanuts, and some natural potatoe chips (hey, a treat once in a while!). I would trade for some potatoe soup. :)

I've been waiting for this day knowing you'd put together something really clever! Too bad the kids at school didn't get to see little Shmoo's very cool lunch.I made St Pat's Cabbage and Cannellini Beans earlier and posted the (copied) recipe on my blog.

Quick question...do you think that the laptop lunch box is "too small" for a female adult's lunch? I was reading another board, and some folks said it was too small for them!Thanks in advance!!! Love your blog!

I am an adult and I don't find it too small at all. I like having the four containers because I can eat one for my snack and have the rest for lunch. If you want to see some of my lunches (warning, not all are vegan) my blog is at blogspot too.

I don't know if you have the new Real Food Daily cookbook, but there's a very very tasty asparagus soup recipe in there - also bright green! That's what we'll be having tonight, with Brussel Sprouts and Edamame!Happy Green Day!

>>Do they just have pea spread or is there actually peanut butter and peas?

Yes, it's peanut butter and green peas blended together (he says to use a fork, but I used my blender for a smoother consistency). It tasted like mild peanut butter. If we weren't off refined sugar I would have added a bit of sweetener to it, too.

If you worry about this being too small for an adult lunch you should see how small some of the Japanese bento boxes are. They're beautiful, but soooo small. And much of it is rice, too! I guess that's why our country is getting larger!

Anonymous, I'm in Canada too and know how frustrating it can be to find neat products you see on the internet. Have you e-mailed the company to see if they have any stores they deal with here that sell the boxes? Would they accept a cheque or money order if you don't have a credit card? Most companies are pretty good if you explain the situation. Good luck!

Hey, I make a Green Soup too! That's what I named it- "Green Soup". It's steamed spinach, asparagus, and broccoli. I blend half with silken tofu, margarine, sea salt, garlic powder and ground pepper, finely chop the rest of the veggies and mix it up again. It's very tasty and so, so green.

Eli, I call my mom's green soup "Cream" of random vegetable since it is indeed made with any random veggies. That being said, I've never tasted a better green soup.Uh, past midnight and I'm craving veggie soupé

Andrea, I'm in Canada too, and I've seen the actual Bento boxes for sale in some of the Asian kitchen stores -- probably not as tupperware-like or water tight as these ones, but I've been tempted to pick one up for a while now. Lunch for me is usually frozen leftovers in a Gladware container crammed sideways into my backpack ;)

I've been using a laptop lunch since september. (as has my husband occasionally - we're grad students and our schedules vary more than shmoo's!) It's enough space, but you do want to include some calorie dense food in there. Alternatively, if you get the lunch container too (we have the 'small' like shmoo, but there's an even bigger one), you can put a soup, stew, salad, etc. in there. The small holds two cups. I found that yesterday filling the thermos with curried faux-chicken salad, using the water bottle, and packing a lara bar held me over from about noon until I got home at half past six.

I often pack an extra granola bar or other snack in with the ice pack pocket in the neoprene case for my husband.

i am loving my laptop lunchbox and find it a great size. i've gotta say, when i got it i was worried that it'd be a bit small but it's actually quite large and fits a great variety of foods in there...

Hi! Another Canadian here! :) For Bento boxes, you might want to try your local Canadian Tire store for Arcosteel Thermoses - I recently bought two that had three plastic containers that fitted together inside a large thermos - it even had a long skinny continer (permanently) fastened to the outside that holds a fork & spoon. It also has a carrying strap. Several years ago, I bought the similar Japanese version (Nissan Thermos) w chopsticks & had never seen anything even close like it in Canada. (I get a lot of funny looks with them - all the labels/printing on the bottles are in Japanese!)

Two caveats: 1) it's not a vacuum thermos in the sense that it has an inner stopper and then a cap over it (in case you just wanted to make it one enormous container of soup for example); it has the 3 plastic containers that fit inside & then the cap. (It might still work, I haven't tried it; I'm just trying to give you a visual idea of what it is.) I also haven't tried them yet myself to see how long they keep things hot/cold.

2) Obviously, you are committed to everything being one temperature. Jennifer can make a "cold" lunch for Schmoo in the laptop lunchbox & pack hot soup in a separate thermos - you can't do this here! All hot, or all cold. Personally, I think I would treat it as a bento box for cold/room temperature things and take my hot soup/chili/whatever, in a separate thermos, if for no other reason than I don't like to put hot foods in plastic containers, food grade or not. It still gives you lots of ideas - dry cereal/milk/fruit, pasta salad/granola/juice, sm salad/cold stirfry/dessert, etc.

I think it's about $ 40.00 (YMMV) on the Cndn Tire website - I got mine on sale. :) Which is the only reason I bought two MORE in addition to the two I already had :) Beside, my Japanese thermoses can only hold chopsticks, not cutlery. That's a good enough reason, right? :) Also, there isn't much of a description on the website - the only way you can even suspect what it is, is by the cutlery container attached on the side.

Jennifer - as another loyal fan who looks forward to your blog every day - THANK YOU for posting this lunch even though little Schmoo didn't go to school!

If you're in Canada, you can order a Laptop lunchbox through the web site. There's an option to print an order form, pay by check and mail in your order. I'm not sure how it would work with a check from a Canadian bank, though. An international money order might be better.

After reading this blog I decided to order one for myself. I bring my lunch to work most days and always end up with a bunch of various individual containers. I ordered the laptop lunch system (with the carrying case) and the small lunch jar. I've only had a chance to use it once but I love it! I was afraid it would be too small, but it holds more than enough food for an adult. The case fits in my backpack much better than several oddly shaped Rubbermaid containers. My chili stayed hot enough to eat 4 hours after I packed it in the lunch jar.

I'm omni, but I plan on trying a lot of Jennifer's recipes when her cookbook eventually comes out.

A friend sent me the link to your site and I am so thrilled to read through everything! My younger son has a severe dairy allergy and loves veggies, so we are always looking for new treats and foods for him. What a wealth of information! Thank you!

This is off-topic, but have you made a version of palak paneer, Jennifer? It's a cheese and spinach curry. Paneer is a very mild cottage-cheese that doesn't melt, and that made me think of vegan cheese. :] Here's a recipe:http://www.food-india.com/recipe/vegetarian.htm

First time here. I LOVE the pictures of the lunches. Hubby and I decided to go all organic recently and have been searching for inspiration to eat less meat, too. If my hubs' lunch looks like these, he'll be healthy in time!

May I request a recipe/suggestions from you? You made Shmoo falafel recently, and they looked round and perfect. Mine always fall apart and taste awful, and a lot of people I've talked to can't get theirs to stay together either. Any suggestions?

Green is awesome! I love your blog so much, I put a link on it so my readers can see this wonderful blog you've put together!

About the falafel, make sure the balls are not to wet, nor too dry. They should feel like "meatballs". If they are too fry the will crumble and flake, if they are too wet they wont hold. They should be moist but not too hard or dry.

Just curious if you've had any success making vegan meringue. I bought the Usbourne "Fairy Cooking" book for my almost 5 year old daughter. We can easily veganize almost everything. I've been searching and searching the web for suggestions and it seems to be a pretty unobtainable vegan quest. Thanks for any suggestions.

Thank you for sharing so many great ideas! You are such an inspiration to me! Since I've been reading your site regularly I have graduated from giving my daughter a dollar for the cafeteria to actually packing lunches..."E" for effort?Baby steps!Anyhow - thanks :-)

I just discovered your site and I LOVE IT!! Thanks for all the great lunch/meal ideas. My daughter and I are vegetarians and I am always looking for great lunch ideas - especially since she is beginning kindergarten next fall.

I live in Canada, and I have to pack my lunches every day (a really bad allergy to milk and more will do that to you).

I was looking for lunch containers, and I got the Starfrut Lock and Lock ones from Zellers - like a bento box, they come in a variety of sizes, and there are ones with inner compartments you can add and remove at will. They are air and water tight, wash up really well, best of all (I don't have a lot of money) they are only about fide dollars. They fit in a variety of standard insulated lunch containers.

I used other containers for a while (I have a tupperware one that I used for over ten years and is still going strong, but I only use it at home now because it leaks a bit) and these are the best ones I can find.

Dude, I love it. In this bit of Canada this is our spring break, so we had st paddy's off too, otherwise I would've made a green lunch. Which is pretty geeky in the ninth grade, but oh well. It looks delicious. I may have to try the PEAnutbutter, because it's creeping me out and I need to assure myself that you wouldn't lead me astray. I might add honey though... [l-o veggie... aspiring vegan.]